Archive for Week 1 Concepts

Edward Bernay is considered one of the greats in the field of public relations. Bernay assisted President Woodrow Wilson in a propaganda campaign to gain support of the allied aims during World War 1. He also designed PR campaigns for politicians and large corporations such as General Motors, Proctor & Gamble, and American Tobacco. He was one of the first to try manipulating the public through their subconscious. He was later named one of the top 100 most influential people of the 20th century in Life magazine.

Audience segmentation is when a large audience is broken down into smaller sub-audiences so that corporations can target these audiences much more specifically. A great example of this is billboards. When you’re driving down a highway, you see billboards for lots of businesses in towns along the freeway. It would make no sense for them to advertise a pub in England on a billboard in Oregon. They also use studies that show cultural tendencies in areas to speak to an audience. For example, there are many more billboards for beer in Wisconsin than most other states.

I can’t say that I have used Wikipedia for any definitions because we are taught at such a young age that Wikipedia is so terrible. I have to admit, however, that I often times use it to verify dates that may not be present in a more in depth article. I think that it’s not the best idea to use things published on Wikipedia, but I’m not sure I would classify it as plagiarism. Just like with any other article, it’s okay if you put things in your own words and cite your source. Teachers aren’t going to be so pleased if you cite Wikipedia as a source, so sometimes it’s better to just stick to more reliable sources like ones from the McIntyre library for instance.

Describe an advertisement you have encountered that was personalized to you: What visual or text elements do you recall about the ad, and how did the personalization affect you?

I was watching a football game this Sunday and feeling sorry for myself because Sunday is my only day off from a six day long week of basketball practice. When the ICYHot commercial came on, I felt like the TV could read my mind. The ad made me really consider buying it, if I wasn’t too sore and exhausted to get off my futon. Well played ICYHot.

Public relations is a strategic form of communication that builds beneficial relationships organizations and the public. To me, this kind of means that when something negative or controversial happens within an organization, they find the most positive outlook to share with the public to keep their relationships on good terms. If I was explaining this to my parents, I would tell them it’s like telling them I got a bad grade on a test in high school. They would see the grade on the report card and be like “Arien, what is this?!” and, you know, you make up something about how everyone got a bad grade in the class because you “never even learned that stuff”. Sound familiar? Or maybe you say something about how you didn’t get it but you get another chance to take the test and you’re going to study really hard. Anything to make sure they don’t think you just slacked off.

News is anything and everything that is happening in the world that people want to know about. It includes disasters, miraculous events, scandals, births, deaths, and legal happenings around the world. News effects me by giving me something to talk about with friends and family. And it effects everyone as a nation and globe by increasing security policies after a disaster or something of the sort. I don’t think I would be as connected with the news if I wasn’t in CJ105 just because it’s not the first thing I think about during the day.

I would describe cultural diversity somewhere along the lines of all the different societies and cultures that exist on this planet. These different regions and groups of people may hold different traditions. There may be very noticeable differences such as the languages spoken, what certain gestures mean, the traditions that are kept in these different cultures, etc. The expansion of media and being able to see more of the world has led to a broader understanding of the vastly different cultures that appear on this planet.

This video, found on YouTube but originally broadcast on a local New York news station, shows the different cultures that are found in the New York area from immigrants from many different reaches of the globe. It is an excellent representation of cultural diversity found in our nation.